Before he could finish, Orlova leaned forward, "I trust her, sir."
His eyes narrowed as he looked up at her, "She almost killed you, Sub-Lieutenant. You aren't exactly blameless, here; you should have ordered her to stop as soon as she disobeyed her orders."
"I know that, sir." She looked at Harper. "I think she has potential, Captain."
"How can I trust her?"
Taking a deep breath, Orlova replied, "I will vouch for her behavior, sir."
Marshall was silent for a long second. "You know what that means, Sub-Lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. For the moment, Spaceman Harper remains in your department." He turned to Harper, continuing, "I'm fining you four weeks pay, Spaceman, and you are restricted to quarters when not on duty for the same period."
"Wha..." She paused, thinking better. "I understand. Sir."
Shaking his head again, Marshall replied, "Dismissed. And Sub-Lieutenant?"
"Sir?"
"I'd better not see Spaceman Harper in here again. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly, sir."
The two of them stepped quickly out of the office into a waiting elevator, the doors closing behind them as they sped down to the security office. Harper leaned against the wall, grinning.
"What are you so happy about?" Orlova said.
"Got away with it."
Orlova slammed her hand on the emergency stop. "We're going to have a conversation right now."
"I saved your life."
"And I'm grateful, and I will not forget it, but you damn well screwed up out there. That data could be vitally needed at some point, and now we're not going to have it, and that is all because of you."
She shrugged, "It was probably nothing important."
"I'm glad to hear it. How do you know that? We'll never know, now, and that could come back to haunt us."
"Aren't you taking this a bit too seriously?"
Her eyes widening, Orlova moved towards the spaceman, her free hand balling into a fist, "There are a hundred and twenty people on this ship, Harper, and at a second's notice all of those lives could be in your hands. We're not playing a game out here, people's lives are at stake every hour of every day. Especially in a critical department like ours."
"I didn't ask to be here."
"I don't care whether you did or not, Harper, you are here, and we've all got to make the best of it. You have a job to do, a job I actually think you are damn good at, and you're going to have to decide to do it."
"And if I don't."
Shaking her head, she replied, "Whether it happens on Alamo or later, you're going to have to decide one day whether you are going to have a life or just coast through on daddy's credit chip."
"Don't talk about my father that way. He was never around, he never had any time for me."
"My father died thirteen years ago. Listed as missing in space. My mother dragged me from one damned dump to another looking for the big score, except it always got smaller and smaller until I managed to cut loose. I think I have you beat, Harper. So don't play that crap with me."
Out of nowhere, Harper smashed a hand against the wall, sending the elevator ringing, "For a little while, I thought you might understand. I didn't have a father either, I was just something to show off at campaign rallies or holovid adverts. His idea of parenting was to tell me how embarrassed he was about me. You had someone to look up to, someone to idolize. I just had a picture on a wall."
The two of them were silent for a minute, Harper looking at the deck, moisture welling up in the corners of her eyes, while Orlova looked on. She placed her hand on the young hacker's shoulder, then sighed.
"Harper."
She looked up. "What?"
"I just put my career on the line, a career I want more than anything else, because I believe in you."
Her forehead crinkled, "You what?"
"You're the best hacker in my department. More than that, you've got the potential to be a great one. I need you, and I need you badly, and if you can just learn a bit of discipline, you're going to be one of the most valued people on the ship."
"No-one ever told me they believe in me before."
Orlova shrugged, "I'll tell you something else – if the Captain didn't think you had potential, you'd be reporting for duties scrubbing the maintenance shafts by now."
"Why didn't he say that, then?"
"Because he's the Captain. Besides, he's just been shot at, and that probably put him in a bit of a bad mood."
"It would me."
"Never mind that restricted to quarters stuff. You don't spend any time with the rest of the crew anyway. Want to start again? Clean slate?"
She nodded, "I think I would. Sub-Lieutenant?"
Chuckling, Orlova replied, "Though getting you to use my rank is a bit of a breakthrough, I think you can call me Maggie when we're on our own."
"Why do you trust me, Maggie?"
"You saved my life. I owe you that. And besides, you aren't that different to me a year or so ago. It took someone else to see that there was something in me that was worth looking at, that I should be wearing this uniform."
"Captain Marshall?"
"Uh-huh. I'm not going to let down his trust, and I've told him that you will improve."
There was a look in Harper's eyes that Orlova hadn't seen before. An earnestness, an eagerness; something that had broken through the sarcastic exterior to the human being underneath. The tears began to dry.
"I won't let you down. You need me to be the best hacker on the ship, you're going to get the best hacker on the ship."
Orlova took her hand off the stop button. "You know, Alamo isn't exactly a spit-and-polish ship at the best of times. How big is that software library of yours?"
"Pretty big."
The doors opened, and they walked down the short corridor towards the security office. Chief Petty Officer Washington was waiting for the two of them, her face scowling at the green-haired hacker as she walked into the room, now smiling. Raising her hand, Orlova turned to Harper.
"I want you to upload your, er, special software to the ship's library. Work with Chief Washington to catalog everything and test it for potential future use by the department."
Harper nodded, "You know what I went through to get that collection? Not to mention who."
"And all of that work will now benefit the ship. You might have to let someone else use your precious programs..."
"I don't mind as long as they use them right."
"Sub, are you sure about this?" Washington said. "We don't know where it came from. Some of it could be illegal."
"We're a long way from Mariner Headquarters now, Chief. That stuff could be useful in future engagements. Anything to give Alamo an edge in battle."
Hesitantly, the chief nodded, "Very well. Could I speak with you for a minute?"
"Sure." She turned to Harper, "Get started, spaceman."
"Yes, ma'am."
Orlova and Washington squeezed themselves into the poky office, the chief regarding her officer, shaking her head. Before she could say anything, Orlova held up her hand.
"I know, I'm taking a risk, and possibly compounding an error. She saved my life, Chief, and risked her own to do it. For all she knew my suit could have infected hers with the same virus."
"That doesn't forgive what she did."
"No, but it might – just – have taught her the lesson she needed to learn. Keep an eye on her, Chief, but I'm going to give her one last chance to prove herself good. Let's see what she does with it."
Smiling, the chief nodded, "If that's what you want, Sub, I'll see that it's done. I'm going to give you a bit of advice, though."
"I think someone told me never to ignore the advice of a Chief."
"Sensible person. Don't ever get the idea of thinking that you see 'something of yourself' in a subordinate. Everyone's different, thinks differently, acts differently. It's one thing to encourage talent, but sometimes people have t
o make mistakes. That's how life works. You can't protect someone because you wanted someone to protect you when you needed it."
Quietly, Orlova nodded, "Thanks, Chief." She smiled, "No wonder the senior enlisted run the service."
"Someone's got to, Sub." Waving a thumb at the partition, she stood up, "I'd better go and keep an eye on her before she starts hacking the master indexing file."
Chapter 10
Sprinting down the corridor, Marshall almost knocked over a passing maintenance tech as he sped towards the briefing room. It was bad form to be late to a senior officer's meeting in any case; worse when you were the one who had called it. The door slid open, and he saw the command staff sitting around the table waiting patiently, though Caine threw him a smug look as he slid down into his chair. Almost everyone, anyway; Mulenga's chair was empty. Midshipman Steele was standing at the rear, clutching a datapad, looking at the vacant seat.
"Lieutenant Mulenga, report to the briefing room," Marshall said into his communicator. There was no reply; he looked around the table, but no-one seemed to know anything. "Lieutenant Mulenga, report in."
"Maybe his communicator isn't working," Cunningham volunteered.
"Maybe. We'll start the meeting without him. Mr. Dietz, why don't you run through the situation on the surface."
The executive officer peered down at his datapad, "It's taken three days, but we've finally managed to fill all the requests of the Republic garrison. The last two shuttles are on the ground now unloading; I'd say we'll be ready to depart in three hours."
Quinn nodded, "We've run down our stores a bit, but nothing the fabricators can't replace in a week or so."
Looking over at the engineer with a frown, Dietz continued, "Doctor Duquesne has completed her medical check-up, and there is nothing serious to report."
"Are we ceding them the planet, Captain?" Caine asked.
Marshall shrugged, "I don't think it is a question of control, Lieutenant. They're in residence, and I'm not disposed to stop them, but nor do I think the Republic will renew the garrison once they've been evacuated. It isn't as if there is anything much worth having there."
"Yeah, I had a look at the specifications on those modules," Quinn interrupted, "It'd almost be easier to build new ones, though they'd be good for parts."
"Could you get them operational?"
Quinn looked slightly hurt, "Of course, sir."
"What about the rest of the system?"
Cunningham looked across at the empty chair, "Lieutenant Mulenga's been doing most of the heavy lifting on this one, sir, but with the reports provided to us by the garrison I think we have everything we need. Their survey did a thorough job. I've run a few checks with our own sensors, and everything seems to match up; we can trust it."
"That saves us weeks," Dixon said. "Less sitting around. My pilots are getting bored."
"You've had them flying around the ship since we settled into orbit," Dietz said. "I was going to bring that up; we're going to have problems with the maintenance regime. Why can't you use the simulators?"
"It isn't the same. If you were a pilot, you'd understand," Dixon replied.
Quinn looked at Dixon, nodding, "We can handle the fighter maintenance, sir."
"I'm not sure our stores can, Lieutenant," Dietz replied.
Marshall looked around the table, "Try and stick to the simulators where you can, Dixon. We're in this for the long haul."
She looked sullenly at him, "Yes, sir."
"Now, our next port of call." He tapped a button, bringing up a slowly rotating projection of local interstellar space. A long red line crossed between four stars, forming a loop, and one of them started to flash. "Wolf 358, the next target on our list. Lieutenant Caine?"
"Midshipman Steele's done the homework on this one, sir; if you'd like to hear her report?"
"By all means."
Taking a step forward, Steele leaned over to use Mulenga's datapad, bringing up a close-in look on the dim red dwarf, a couple of planets slowly rotating around it in accelerated orbits. None of them looked particularly inviting, just dull brown rocks. Dixon looked from side to side, as if trying to think of an easy way of getting out of the meeting. Before the young midshipman could properly get started, the door opened and Mulenga, panting, burst into the room, throwing a datapad in front of Marshall.
"Sorry I'm late, sir, but this you have to see."
Frowning, Marshall picked up the datapad. He saw a swirl of planetological data, readings gathered from surveys of nearby stars, then his eyes widened; the computer-generated image showed a double planetary system, two large bodies orbiting each other close to the star. There was something odd about the file, but it took looking at the data read to work out what.
"Lieutenant," he said to Mulenga, who was pushing past Steele to his seat, "this isn't Wolf 358."
"No, sir. We spent the first day here looking at our next target, but we didn't find anything at all interesting." The midshipman looked rather put out; she'd spent days working on a briefing about the 'not interesting' star. "I ordered a focus on anomalies, and we've been working round the clock in the scanning sections on this."
Marshall held up the datapad. "So where is this?"
"GJ 2097."
Dietz frowned, "Could I see the report, sir?" Marshall slid the datapad across the table.
"For the benefit of the uneducated..." Cunningham said.
Clearing the image from the table, Mulenga inputted new data, bringing up a holoimage of the star, then zooming into the innermost planet. The image stored in the ship's computer showed a large, barren world, four times the size of Earth, with a notation that indicated that its orbital path was uncertain – but that it was in the habitable zone for life.
"According to the readings from Trident Station, nothing particularly notable. Just another super-Earth, far too large for us. However, we're now a lot closer, and our data is a lot more accurate." He tapped in some more data, and the image changed. Now displayed was two objects, one almost as big as Earth, the other a third of the size, slowly rotating around each other. The computer painted in an atmosphere, water – and even vegetation.
"That's impossible," Caine said.
"It's all in the data. I was waiting for the last pass. Our readings from the planet show chlorophyll present on the planet. Not to mention oxygen and water...Captain, we've discovered another habitable planet."
"Accuracy?"
"Better than eighty percent."
Marshall sat back in his chair, shaking his head, "And we didn't see this before because?"
"As I said, sir, too far away. The planet is close to the star, which introduces its own complications. Also, well, the last examination of this star was thirty-nine years ago according to our records."
"Thirty-nine?" Cunningham said.
"It's a big galaxy, Lieutenant," Mulenga said. "It wasn't a system anyone expected to explore for a long time."
Knowing the answer to his question, Marshall asked, "Your recommendations, Lieutenant?"
"We should investigate immediately. We can reach the star in one jump from our present position; that will leave us with more than sufficient fuel for the return to Lalande."
Cunningham shook his head, "Not only does that take us well off our flight plan, but that plan was designed to fill certain tactical and strategic goals."
Orlova's eyes widened, "Lieutenant, we're talking about a habitable planet. Either we find a new world or we go and look at a couple of dead rocks. I vote for the planet."
"This is not a democracy, Sub-Lieutenant," Cunningham replied.
Caine smiled, "From a tactical point of view, there's no point being able to defend real estate if we don't have any real estate to defend. We know that the Republic is interested in this system, and that they'll be back soon to pick up their team; we don't what them to find out about it."
"They must already know," Mulenga said. "Their sensors are better than ours."
"Which doubles down o
n why they wanted Ragnarok," Marshall said. "Once they got Helium-3 mining going there on a serious basis, they could launch an expedition of their own. Fortunately for us, we got there first."
Caine nodded, "That's why they could launch the Procyon colony so quickly. They had everything ready for GJ 2097. Hell, they might have been there already."
Looking around the room, Dixon said, "To hell with all of this; let's go and see."
Cunningham sighed, replying, "The best course of action is to pick up the Republic colonists and return to Hunter Station. We can refuel, report our discoveries, and come right out again if ordered."
"And if we aren't?" Dixon replied, "We could be sitting on our butts at Ragnarok for weeks, months waiting for the Combined Chiefs to decide. We need to go, now."
"I agree," Dietz said, attracting the attention of everyone in the room. Cunningham's eyes widened; his expected ally had joined the other side.
Marshall smiled, nodding, "As do I."
Cunningham shook his head, "I must remind everyone in this room that we were ordered on a specific flight plan, and that this constitutes a direct violation of our orders."
"Noted, Lieutenant," Marshall replied. "Our mission, as I was briefed, was to seek out opportunities, and to get to them before the Republic could."
"Procyon's a long way from here," Cunningham said.
"Not far enough that they couldn't do it. Three jumps. With refueling tankers, they could mount that expedition," Caine said. "And put enough ships in orbit that we couldn't get in."
"We can't afford to take the risk." Marshall looked around the room, "I'm breaking off the expedition route as planned, and we will set course for GJ 2097. Mr. Dietz, when can we break orbit?"
"Alamo can be ready for space in four hours, Captain."
"Mr. Mulenga, I suspect you've already plotted a hendecaspace transit..." The astrogator grinned in response. "So please get it sent up to the bridge."
"What about Wolf 358?" Cunningham said.
"That will have to wait for a later expedition." Marshall smiled, "Good news for the garrison, as well. We'll be back here to pick them up a long time before anyone else could come out from Ragnarok. Though I wouldn't want to have to bring the news home that we're likely to give them." He paused, then continued, "I am aware that I am committing a violation of our sailing orders; I believe that this action is justified, but if anyone wishes to protest at this point feel free; it will be noted as such in my log."
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